


The Ultimate Detective

by NuclearWaste



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Pre-Game Personalities (New Dangan Ronpa V3), Pre-Game Saihara Shuichi, Video Tapes AU, basically if believe Tsumugi was telling the truth and those confession tapes were real
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-06
Updated: 2020-02-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:41:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22588087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NuclearWaste/pseuds/NuclearWaste
Summary: Shuichi loved the Danganronpa franchise more than life itself, but it's obvious that he had a clear favorite: Kyoko Kirigiri. After all, she was utterly perfect.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 23





	The Ultimate Detective

Anyone who paid even the slightest attention to Shuichi Saihara knew he loved Danganronpa. The evidence was everywhere – the decals on his phone case, the posters plastered inside his locker, an abundance of keychains too precious to risk getting scratched on his key ring instead displayed on his dresser. His collection didn’t border on obsession – it had toppled over the line with four dozen boxes of merch in tow.

Anyone who looked just a little bit closer at his collection would notice that one character appeared far more frequently than the others. A girl with light lavender hair and stern purple eyes and a stoic expression and always,  _ always _ wearing her black gloves. Without a doubt, Kyoko Kirigiri was his favorite.

Of course, detective characters always caught his eye when they appeared in a new season of Danganronpa. Without fail, their backstories were perfectly crafted, their personalities designed to stand out, their wardrobe carefully picked to draw the viewers’ eyes. Ultimate Detectives, whether they stayed around to the end of the season or not, were always memorable. Shuichi was no different from the rest of the audience in that way. 

  
  


But Shuichi didn’t just like Kirigiri because she was an Ultimate Detective, or because she was  _ The _ Ultimate Detective. Though it certainly helped that she excelled in the field he loved, the field his favorite uncle was in, the field he respected so greatly for pursuing the truth behind mysteries no matter what. Sure, there were plenty of elitists out there who would insist that Kyoko Kirigiri was the best Ultimate Detective because she was the first, the one that made it popular and cool, but to like her for such shallow reasons would be on par with calling her superior because “original waifu is best waifu, duh.” And Kyoko Kirigiri did not deserve such treatment.

No, Shuichi favored Kyoko Kirigiri so strongly for more than just her talent. Kyoko was the type of person he could easily like. She was smart, far too smart for the original Mastermind or any of the knock-offs. She unraveled mysteries before the protagonist could even spot them. Calling her intelligent was an understatement. With her quick thinking and flawless deductions, she made herself insanely valuable to the original group of trapped teens. No one could doubt her importance.

But it was more than that. What first caught Shuichi’s attention when he was channel surfing late one night in a big house that could only fit emptiness, what made him watch the entire rerun of the first season of a show he couldn't even pronounce despite jumping in at somewhere in episode four with no idea of what was going on, what caused him to drop the remote and leave it on the floor was a close-up frame of Kyoko Kirigiri during the investigation. It wasn't that the lighting highlighted her face perfectly or how easily she rattled off facts or that the lead clearly had a thing for her. It was her eyes and the way they held no emotion. Eyes that matched the same deadness he saw in his own.

Kyoko didn't wear her feelings on her face like everyone else did. She approached everything, her free time events, murder investigations, everything, with an air of detachment - and not the haughty, I'm better than you type of detachment Togami had but real void-filled, emotionless detachment. The real sort of detachment that makes people around you whisper that something's wrong with you, that you're broken, that your brain’s messed up, that you're robotic, that you’d think his parents could afford to get him  _ fixed  _

She clearly felt things. Annoyance, joy, fear, self-satisfaction. Just not on the same scale as everyone else. It was the scale’s fault, not hers.

Kyoko didn't get people. Even with all her intellect, she couldn't sort out what wasn't and was “normal” or “appropriate.” During scenes when the rest of the cast would look scandalized or upset by Kyoko’s dialogue or actions, she'd be standing there just as confused as Shuichi felt sitting on his couch. Why were they all so concerned by her blank expression? Shuichi would get called out for the same thing all the time, but when he smiled, people would get even more creeped out. People didn't make any sense.

Kyoko didn't make friends easily. It's not because she doesn't want any: it's because they look at her blank face and see that she doesn't understand their norms and everyone decides it's too much effort so it's better to just be on your own anyways because why even get attached if they're just going to leave? And Shuichi finds merit in that. He's waited up too many nights for his parents’ flight to suddenly be canceled and rescheduled five months later, woken up to too many texts and emails and scraps of papers explaining that a new script, role, movie came up and “we'll call as soon as we can” (they never can), found too many desks inched further and further away from his own each day of the school year, spent too many days hiding behind a baseball cap so that maybe, just  _ maybe  _ his face will be obscured enough that someone, anyone won't see how emotionless it is and think he's a psychopath, a serial killer, some kind of freak. So Kyoko, quite rightly in Shuichi’s opinion, decides that if people are never going to stay, there's no point in trying to care in the first place.

Of course resident hope boy Naegi would not stand for this. Shuichi finds Makoto Naegi to be average. He's the normal safe sort of protagonist that stars in dozens of books, shows and movies. Optimistic, naive, hopeful. Bland. Boring. Predictable. Shuichi personally wouldn't have cared at all if the lead was dead by the end of the killing game. But Naegi befriended Kyoko Kirigiri, proved himself to be worthy of her trust, and made her care about him. So Shuichi might’ve spent most of the fifth trial and subsequent punishment with his eyes glued to his screen, muttering, “don't you dare, Naegi, don't you fucking  _ dare _ .”

Though Shuichi liked Kyoko Kirigiri, he wasn't expecting to still care about her by the season finale. A small part of him knew that Naegi would convince her to shed her emotionless persona and become a bubbly, cheery, “normal” girl. That's how the industry worked. Keeping Kyoko Kirigiri as herself was too risky of a move - viewers weren't supposed to “get her” and he's learned enough from his parents to know that what audiences don't “get” gets cut. Shuichi spends the last few episodes of the season waiting for the other shoe to drop and finds himself smiling unabashedly when it doesn't. Even in the Future Arc, they don't make Kyoko Kirigiri into something she's not and that's when Shuichi decides that Danganronpa has to be the best show ever.

Kyoko Kirigiri is Shuichi’s absolute favorite character ever. In a world where his parents spend less time with him than they do on planes, the closest thing he's got to a friend is a shelf full of all fifty-two seasons of Danganronpa, and whenever he closes his eyes he wishes he won't wake up, it’s the only fact that really matters.


End file.
